Favorite Schoology Hacks

Here are some of my favorite Schoology hacks from Bradley Kemp and Adam Larson around course design, student learning, and workflow efficiency.

Course Design

Dynamic Profile Pictures. This ONLY applies to unofficial courses, profile pictures, and groups (remember to keep your course picture as the period number). Upload long pic if you want to push the landing page tabs down. They can also be GIFs!

Speak The Lingo. Copy and paste emojis from here to assignment names, folders, and text.

Autosized Images. Adjust “max-width” to “=100%” so that the width of an embedded image resizes based on the width of the browser window.

Embed Pictures in Updates. This is something that isn’t possible yet (as of October 10th, 2017). Convert pictures to HTML by inserting them into an assignment then copying and pasting the picture into an update.

Student Learning

Module Homepages. Embed a hyperlinked Google Slides into Schoology for “website-like” navigation within a Schoology assignment or page.

Hidden Additional Information. Hide certain information until students “do” something. Ex: Fill out a Google form and embed the live results as the first post in a Schoology discussion. Make sure to hide submissions until students have submitted. After submitting a discussion post, students will see the Form responses.

“Always Open” Submissions. Keep an assignment open throughout the year for continuous revisions or to collect ongoing journal entries.

Workflow Efficiency

Random Groupings of Work. Create Schoology groups and obtain the access codes. Create a Schoology quiz that randomizes the selection of the access codes. Students add themselves to the group.

Rubric Duplication. This isn’t an intended feature. To prevent having to re-write all criteria, create a Schoology assignment and assign the pre-existing rubric with stuff you want copied, then click “Create New” rubric. It should create a new rubric with all the old criteria inside.